ADULTERATION OF FOOD AND MEDICINE 293 



committee recommended that the use of alum in baking pow- 

 ders be prohibited by law. 



The committee visited ninety two breweries and bought 

 four hundred samples. They found salicylic acid most often 

 in imported beers, and American beers for export. They 

 found candy much adulterated and colored with aniline dyes, 

 sometimes with terra alba and glucose constituents. Car- 

 bonated still wine sold for champagne. Peanut and cocoa nut 

 shells in spices, it was found, made the gromid spices cheaper 

 than the whole, as the mixture paid for the grinding, and left 

 a handsome profit. The evidence of the government chemist 

 showed almost every sample of cream of tartar, purchased 

 either at the drug or grocery stores, to be fraudulent, only one 

 having a trace of it. This stuff is known by the cebalistic 

 letters C. T. S. which to the initiated means cream of tartar 

 substitute. This substitute is alum, and many housekeepers, to 

 be on the safe side, make their own baking powder, with this 

 fraudulent cream of tartar and common soda. The sale of the 

 dried and imperfect berries of coffee (which do not have the 

 taste of coffee) is prohibited in Germany, so they are screened, 

 and sent to America by the ton, as black jack, and we have this 

 thrice imported coffee in our breakfast beverage, with suffi- 

 cient chicory to enrich it. 



Dr. Wiley fomid lard was adulterated with vegetable oils, 

 or fats, under the name of refined lard, cotton seed oil being 

 used as an ingredient. Concerning olive oil, he states that hun- 

 dreds of barrels of cotton seed oil go to France and Italy yearly, 

 for the purpose of being refined, and that it is returned to us 

 as olive oil, containing only a mixture of olive oil. His evidence 

 showed that ground mustard was chiefly flour and turmeric 

 for coloring. Coffee, ground and ungroimd, roasted and im- 

 roasted, was found adulterated with various substances. 

 Molasses and flour is moulded and colored, to suit the purpose 

 of mixing with green or roasted berries; sometimes twenty 

 five per cent of artificial berries are found per pound. He 

 said that ground coffee was often two thirds chicory. Coffee 

 selling at forty cents per pound and chicory at about eight 

 cents. Said that fillers were manufactured in large quantities, 

 and in colors suitable for mixing with pepper, cinnamon, and 



